One of the region's most supported but also costliest transit projects ---- the proposed $1.7 billion Trolley link to La Jolla ---- will be the subject of a series of public meetings starting next week.

The forums, which start with a Tuesday meeting in Clairemont and extend through June 21 in other communities, will focus on the project's draft environmental documents released in early May.

Known as the Mid-Coast trolley line, the project's environmental reports study the impact the light-rail extension would have on noise, traffic, air quality, aesthetics and other topics along the proposed 11-mile corridor.

The extension would include eight new stations, including two on the UC San Diego campus and one at Westfield UTC, formerly known as the University Towne Centre mall. A ninth station at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in La Jolla is under review.

Joe LaCava, vice chairman of the La Jolla Community Planning Association, said debate is likely to continue over the project's cost and whether a Trolley extension is the answer to the area's traffic gridlock.

The link is projected at more than three times the $510 million cost of the trolley's most recent, and shorter extension east through Mission Valley and under the San Diego State campus.

Still, LaCava said, the extension to La Jolla enjoys strong support along the corridor.

“You really don’t get the sense of any kind of serious opposition,” he said. “This project is kind of a logical extension. It uses the existing railway (south of State Route 52). It connects to UCSD. It connects with the employment centers in the UTC area. I’m just hearing: ‘Why didn’t they build it sooner.’”

Janay Kruger, chairwoman of the University City Planning Group, said there are many details to work out during the public's comment period on the environmental documents, which ends July 17.

She said she hopes planners will ensure limits are placed on the noise the rail network creates and ensure its stations are aesthetically pleasing.

“We don’t just want some blocky, awful (station design),” she added.

San Diego City Councilwoman Sherri Lightner, who represents much of the corridor, did not respond to requests for comment as of early Wednesday afternoon.

County Supervisor Ron Roberts, one of the project's most prominent backers, said in a news release this month that the trolley project would be "a significant step forward for transit access in San Diego."

In December, Roberts said he was worried about cost increases that pushed the total from $1.24 billion to $1.7 billion over the past two years. But he added, at the time, that he had asked federal regulators to allow the overlapping of the project's design and construction phases, to save money.

Members of a Mid-Coast trolley working group met Wednesday and discussed a range of concerns that they said they hope will be addressed in the project’s final environmental reports. Those included everything from moving bus stops are as close as possible to the planned trolley stations to ensuring wildlife corridors in areas such as Rose Canyon aren’t closed off by the new trolley link.